"The best thing that ever happened to me is that nothing happened in writing. I ended up working for engineering companies, and that's where I found my material, in the everyday struggle between capitalism and grace. Being broke and tired, you don't come home your best self.“


-George Saunders

posted in home


The best thing that ever happened to me is that nothing happened in writing. I ended up working for engineering companies, and that's where I found my material, in the everyday struggle between capitalism and grace. Being broke and tired, you don't come home your best self.

Other Quotes You Might Like

Discover more inspiring quotes from our collection

"Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes, Literature answers. Are people good or bad? You bet, says Literature. But unlike other systems of knowing, Literature declines to eradicate one truth in favor of another."

-George Saunders

truthView Quote
"I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar."

-George Saunders

sympathyView Quote
"I started out in engineering. I was a geophysical engineer. Throughout the course of my life I've done a lot of strange jobs, and the effect has been to make me think a little more skeptically about our capitalist society."

-George Saunders

societyView Quote
"I turned 54 this year and I find myself feeling like I'm in a bit of a race to get down on paper the way I really feel about life - or the way it has presented to me. And because it has presented to me very beautifully, this is hard. It is technically very hard to show positive manifestations."

-George Saunders

positiveView Quote
"If you think of a work of fiction as a kind of scale model of the world, then the positive valences - where things turn out better than you thought they would - ought to be in there somewhere, too."

-George Saunders

positiveView Quote
"Whatever your supposed politics are - left, right - if you put it in a human connection, most people will rise to the occasion and feel the human pain in a way that they might not if it was presented in a more conceptual way."

-George Saunders

politicsView Quote

More Quotes About home

Explore other inspiring quotes in this category

"Imagine if you had baseball cards that showed all the performance stats for your people: batting averages, home runs, errors, ERAs, win/loss records. You could see what they did well and poorly and call on the right people to play the right positions in a very transparent way."

-Ray Dalio

homeView Quote
"I think it's easiest to teach by example. My dad didn't tell us to work hard we just saw how hard he worked. I know I have shortcomings - like a short fuse - but I've learned you can't come home from a long day of work and snap at the kids."

-Chris O'Donnell

homeView Quote
"My father was always depressed. When he was home and sober, he was mostly in his room."

-Sherman Alexie

homeView Quote
"To the former child migrants, who came to Australia from a home far away, led to believe this land would be a new beginning, when only to find it was not a beginning, but an end, an end of innocence - we apologise and we are sorry. To the mothers who lost the maternal right to love and care for their child - we apologise, and we are sorry."

-Malcolm Turnbull

homeView Quote
"At home I've got a very puerile, juvenile sense of humour."

-Thom Yorke

homeView Quote
"We talk a lot in our home together about where we're going, what I'm doing."

-Melinda Gates

homeView Quote